Music sales in Sweden -– a country long known as an online piracy paradise —
is suddenly showing double digit growth, amid a surge in digital music sales.
But instead of instead of iTunes downloads, the growth is driven by almost
entirely by streaming services, an increasingly popular method of consuming
music by paying a fixed subscription every month, rather than buying individual
songs.

While music sales in Sweden are still a small piece of a very large global
pie, the small Scandinavian nation and its Nordic neighbors have long been seen
as early adopters and innovators when it comes to tech trends — from the way
physical devices are designed to the way content is delivered to consumers.

The Swedish Recording Industry Association Friday released some fascinating
numbers on last year’s music sales in the Scandinavian country. The data showed
a 14% increase in music sales in Sweden in 2012, with total music sales hitting
943 million Swedish kronor ($145 million), up from 829 million kronor in
2011.

After a prolonged period of decline, much like the rest of the world, music
sales in Sweden started growing again in 2009 due to the rise of digital music
sales.

The Swedish Recording Industry Association said digital-music sales overtook
physical sales in Sweden two years ago. Last year, digital music sales accounted
for more than 60% of music sales in Sweden, and 90% of the digital music sales
came from streaming.

If the world is heading in the same direction as Sweden Apple
Inc. AAPL-0.86%and its iTunes Store is certainly facing
mounting troubles. While iTunes, the juggernaut in the digital media world,
still benefits from its vast reach, it still doesn’t offer a streaming
subscription service.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of streaming versus downloading. Music
streaming services like Anglo-Swedish Spotify and France’s Deezer offer
unlimited access to their vast libraries of music for roughly the same price a
month that users pay for a single album on iTunes.

Scandinavia, and especially Sweden, has long been known as an online piracy
paradise, but thanks to the recent proliferation of companies providing legal
on-demand streaming services for music, the region’s reputation as a safe haven
for illegal file sharing is beginning to change.